An Open Letter to Bridges Employees, Parents, Advocates and Supporters
Hi, everyone –
During the last twenty-five years, I have been honored and privileged to work with over two hundred children with autism spectrum disorders and their families. The vast majority of these were with Bridges.
For the last twelve years, Bridges has provided the high quality of ABA service to our clients that was required to address their needs. We never refused to accept a client because a child was low functioning or had other secondary conditions. Even given that liberal admissions policy, we have been able to achieve a “best outcome” status for some (over 22%) of our children. These children were able to achieve skill levels that allowed them to learn and thrive in regular education environments without aide (or often any) support. The majority of the children we serve were learning in regular education classes with aide support at that time they finished our programs, as are the majority we are serving today. Several more of the children with us today are in the process of transitioning to learning without support in those regular education classes as of this writing. The smallest group of children we have served are in special education classes.
In twelve years we have known of only one child who completed a Bridges program that was unable to remain in the family home.
None of that was done by me alone. I am indebted to the hundreds of Bridges staff members who worked with these children tirelessly and with professionalism even in the increasingly difficult circumstances the last few years have brought. None of these children would have made the gains they made without these people giving them their expertise, their time, their inspiration, their enthusiasm, and their hearts. I am indebted to the families of these children, the advocates that worked with them, and to those people at the various funding agencies that allowed us to provide the services to these children and their families. Bridges was originally brought to Sacramento by the efforts of a few dedicated staff members at Alta Regional Center. Over the years we earned a reputation as a high quality ABA provider among the parent community and many school district administrators, as well as many Regional Center staff.
The challenges for children and their families of simply living with autism are an enormous burden. It does not seem fair that financial issues to treat and deal with the autism are another challenge that must be faced. Unfortunately, addressing autism with high quality therapy cannot be done without funding. As you know, the current economic crisis has been marked by unparalleled budget deficits at the state level as well as school district budgets. Virtually all of the funding that allows Bridges to function comes from these two sources. As many of you know, our rates from the regional center have been frozen since 2001. We have been attempting to negotiate with the regional center for a rate increase since 2005. Not only have we been unsuccessful in negotiating a rate increase, rates to all vendors, including ours, were cut 3% last summer, resulting in levels lower than those we received since prior to July 2001. Last year a local school district also announced a unilateral rate cut. This year a further ten percent cut across all the remaining districts was also announced to go into effect in July 2010. Over these years, our costs to attract, retain, train, and provide health benefits for the staff needed to provide high quality therapy has increased substantially.
Additionally, for the last year or two we have been able to attract only a very few referrals from the Regional Center. We are unaware of any problems with the quality of our services or the professionalism of our staff that would be legitimate causes for this.
I know that our staff has done their best for the children we serve, and have accepted a number of compensation changes while maintaining their professionalism and quality of service. However, we have already cut costs as much as we can. Pro bono therapy (PNB or payable-not-billable) has needed to stop because of funding issues. We have also cut back or eliminated conference attendance, a large amount of paid training for staff and nearly all raises and staff incentives. The amount of health benefit coverage for staff has been reduced from 100% to 80%. The senior staff in particular has worked without a raise for years. We have cut all our other expenses as much as we can without impacting the quality of our services to a point where the children will no longer make the progress they need and deserve. Many of our talented and dedicated staff are working shorter hours because we simply do not have enough children to staff them, especially in the mornings. Even senior staff with advanced degrees, BCBAs, and years of experience are not able to fill their caseloads because of the lack of children, as our current clients fade and or graduate out of their programs.
We have investigated other options to allow Bridges to remain a viable concern. We applied for and were authorized to provide services under several health plans, but children have never been referred to us from these health insurance companies. We have considered other possible services to be provided to extend our reach in the field. Also, since February we have pursued a potential transfer of ownership. Several attempts were made to make this transfer work, but the hurdles were too great and we were forced to conclude that a transfer of ownership was not possible.
It is with deep sorrow that I must inform you that due to these and other factors that have resisted all my attempts to overcome, Bridges will no longer be able to provide services to children after June 30, 2010.
Audrey